Italy looks to replace unconstitutional election law

05/12/2013

Officials reject claims parliament delegitimized

(By Denis Greenan).
Rome, December 5 - Italy is looking to replace its
widely criticised Porcellum or 'pig-sty' election law after the
Constitutional Court struck it down Wednesday.
The court, in a long-awaited ruling, said the law was
unconstitutional because of two things.
First, it said a mechanism granting a huge bonus to the
winner in the House was against the fairness doctrine enshrined
in Italy's postwar founding document.
Second, and for the same reasons, it ruled against a system
that prevents voters from picking their representatives in
constituencies.
Since the law was introduced in 2006, party leaders have put
hand-picked candidates on so-called 'blocked lists' which were
then voted on, with the top names entering parliament according
to the percentage of the vote won.
Premier Enrico Letta, of the centre-left Democratic Party
(PD), has said changing the electoral law will be one of the
first items for his new, smaller but more cohesive government
with the New Centre Right (NCD), a splinter group from Silvio
Berlusconi's recently disbanded People of Freedom (PdL) party.
The NCD broke away when it refused to sink Letta after the
PD insisted on applying an anti-corruption law to oust
Berlusconi from the Senate on a tax-fraud conviction last month.
Berlusconi's revived Forza Italia (FI) party went into
opposition.
The PD-NCD alliance faces a key confidence vote in the
December 11 on a revamped reform agenda.
While it has a large majority in the House, thanks to the
bonus, its majority in the Senate has now been cut to about a
dozen on paper because of FI's exit.
On Thursday officials rejected claims from FI and the
biggest opposition group, former comedian Beppe Grillo's
anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), that parliament had
lost its legitimacy because of the Constitutional Court's
ruling.
"Parliament is fully legitimate, the Court itself does not
call that into doubt," said Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano.
He stressed that, in its ruling, the court said it was up to
parliament to frame a new law.
Replacing the Porcellum, he said, was "imperative".
The main problem was whether there was "the political will"
to do so, the head of State said.
House Speaker Laura Boldrini also rejected claims from the
opposition that parliament had been delegitimized by the ruling.
"This House is fully legitimate and legitimized to
function," she said, responding to heckling from the M5S.
Parties also began arguing over where an electoral-reform
bill should start its parliamentary journey.
In response, Boldrini said she would talk to Senate Speaker
Piero Grasso to decide where the bill should be presented.
The Porcellum, passed under a previous Berlusconi
government, has been widely blamed for leading to inconclusive
February election results, months of political deadlock, and
Letta's unprecedented left-right coalition government with
traditional foe the PdL.
The PD and PdL were engaged in constant sniping that
hampered lawmaking.
The PD and NCD are closer on many points.
The Porcellum's architect, Northern League heavyweight
Roberto Calderoli, admitted a day after it was passed that it
was a 'porcata' or "mess", leading to the pig-Latin tag it was
given.
The Porcellum militated against any party getting a solid
majority in the Senate, which has equal lawmaking status with
the House.
Calderoli has since frankly admitted it was specifically
designed to stop the centre left, which had a big advantage in
the 2006 pre-election polls, from achieving a stable majority in
both houses.
In the end Romano Prodi squeaked home by only two seats in
the Upper House and struggled to keep a weak and fractious
coalition together for two years.
Current reform plans all envisage stripping the Senate of
lawmaking powers.
Two PD Senators filed a bill Thursday to scrap the Senate
altogether.
Parties are divided, however, on whether to turn to
German-style proportional representation (PR), a French system
with two rounds of voting, or a mostly first-past-the-post
system.
Napolitano on Thursday urged the parties not to reconsider
PR, which he said had been scrapped 20 years ago.
Efforts to change the Porcellum have foundered on several
occasions in the last few years.